Indian Judge Sentences Uber Driver to Life Imprisonment For Rape

Shiv Kumar Yadav, an Uber driver who was sentenced Tuesday to life imprisonment for rape and kidnapping, was escorted following a New Delhi court appearance Dec. 8, 2014.

NEW DELHI—An Indian judge sentenced a driver to life imprisonment for the rape of a woman in a car booked through the Uber Technologies Inc. app in Delhi, an attack that heightened safety concerns about the “sharing economy,” where strangers meet in the real world after a brief introduction through technology.

Shiv Kumar Yadav, convicted of rape and kidnap last month, will “spend the rest of his natural life in jail” for his “very brutal crime,” public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava said Tuesday.

Mr. Yadav’s lawyer, D.K. Mishra, said his client would appeal the guilty verdict.

Uber, which said that since the attack it has improved background checks of drivers and safety measures for passengers in India, has maintained that it is a technology provider rather than a transportation service—and so not liable for the actions of its drivers.

Life imprisonment is the maximum penalty for a nonfatal rape in India. Punishments were toughened after a fatal gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi in December 2012 prompted national introspection about the safety of women in India. It also led the law ministry to set up six courts in Delhi, the national capital, that were freed from other work specifically to handle rape cases, in hopes of speeding trials and raising the conviction rate.